


Can't Read French (Or Signals)

by pennydreddful (Clementine19)



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22351711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementine19/pseuds/pennydreddful
Summary: Everyone on this ship is dumb, thirsty, and masochistic with overlapping skill sets in between. 'Cept Parv, who is just straight-up competent, and who we love and cherish.We're doing all the classic fic tropes in here, lads: pining, longing, sex pollen; why love triangle when you could polyship?Fem!cap is Alex Hawthorne in this one—ADA asked her to say she was, and she doesn't really recall what it was before.Eventual Max/Felix/Alex because I said so.
Relationships: Maximillian DeSoto/Felix Millstone, The Captain/Felix Millstone, The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Kudos: 52





	1. Disclosure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Empty Man quest aftermath—Felix, Max, and Alex have to camp on Monarch. Alex admits that she is quite new to Halcyon while it dawns on her that she hasn't touched another soul in seventy years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am both chaotic and stupid, so I write things in vignette form out of order. This is chronologically the first chapter, and I wrote it after the first three I posted, so I'm re-ordering. Thanks for bearing with me! 
> 
> _It's not the best chooooooice..._

The Captain had absolutely fucking had it by the time they camped that night, taking over an abandoned marauder’s outpost, that used to be a corporate outpost, that used to be beautiful feathery alien grass. Her mood was more tense miasma than audible conflict.

Max looked appropriately abashed once his plan to slash Chaney’s carotid very very slowly had unfurled, and quietly put up their tents and made a fire while ignoring the substantial bruising imposed on the left side of his face by Alex in their scuffle. 

“I just want to inflict massive amounts of pain on this guy,” he had gritted out before launching towards him to do just that. Alex hit the ground to take out his legs as he stepped, cleanly getting him under her before he could orient himself. Max was strong and incredibly riled up—she may or may not have kneed him violently in the groin in an early attempt to subdue him—but he eventually slackened below her with a markedly quieter promise to yield. 

She’d already downed saltuna earlier in the day, so she climbed to a ridge to watch the sunset over Monarch’s aggressive terrain with a Zero Gee they’d looted. Felix padded up the little incline behind her, sitting to entertain or distract her, whichever seemed reasonably safe.

She passes him a zeegee (that’s how he’d spelled it when she asked what the fuck he was trying to say) and doesn’t look over. Felix credits her, though—he can’t hold a candle to a sunset on Monarch. He always breathes in deep when a little breeze picks up, she notices without judgment, curious if he’s smelling the air like a canid. Space stations tend not to have much olfactory overlap with the natural world. 

“Soooooooo,” he starts, low.

“Is Max okay?” Alex asks, soft enough that it won’t carry on the wind.

“You’re both pretty feral. I think he’s just embarrassed,” Felix swigs his bottle. “And pretty pissed.”

“I uh. I get the feeling,” Alex comments. 

“Yeah? What were you up to before you prevented me from smacking some scabs around?”

“Felix, you would have easily been arrested,” Alex scoffs.

Felix looks at her, doesn’t respond, and repeats: “What were you up to?”

Alex glances around anxiously. She’s worn down from the day to be sure, but caution and discretion could look a whole lot like the reason she’d probably toss Max off the ridge if he dared come up here.

“Can I tell you something nobody on the crew knows?” She starts.

Felix’s eyes widen and he scoots to face her entirely, rapt. 

Alex regards him and starts unplaiting her hair to give her hands something to do. 

“Please don’t get everyone going, but I’m a colonist from the _Hope._ Phineas Welles revived me. I’ve been cold for seventy years, everyone I know is dead or in stasis, and my name isn’t Alex,” she spills, draining the rest of her Zero Gee once her hair is down.

“Wow, boss. Wow. No wonder we get along. You’re a straight-faced bullshitter.” 

“Fuck, nevermind,” Alex murmurs, ready to write this off as a fantastic joke. 

“Okay, wait. Basics. What is your name?”

“Um, I don’t remember and my demographic data was left on the _Hope_ when he fucking ejected me to Terra 2. Which was a pleasant way to wake up when I expected to emerge alive with friends and family on the colonies? I’m ninety-nine years old, apparently. Nobody recognizes me. I move faster than most folks because I was suspended for so long, I sleep three hours a night tops, and I wish someone would explain what the fuck happened to food after The Crossing and why you’re all fine with it.”

“I mean, I can’t prove that my family came over in The Crossing either. I, uh, don’t know who the Millstones were or why I’m one, so I can’t exactly sit here and grill you, boss. Certainly won’t judge you.”

“You don’t believe me, though,” Alex observes. 

“Sure I do. You do all sorts of unbelievable shit every day. I’m a believer, I guess,” Felix muses. “Not like our preacher, but he might need to rethink that whole situation, I bet.”

Alex grunts a little laugh. Felix places his hand over hers a little awkwardly, trying to be reassuring without being too invasive. He balances it by denying himself the chance to take in her face, all descript cheekbones and keen eyes. Alex smiles and withdraws her hand, standing and brushing off her clothes before the proximity enables her impulse to learn about Felix with her mouth on his. 

“I need to apologize to him. He sucks and made a shit decision with the shit information he had. And I might have broken his face.”

“I won’t tell the rest of the crew until you say so, boss. But I do think it bears mentioning if we’re going to end up near Welles again or the _Hope_.”

Alex wonders at how accessible and adaptable he is, curious to understand what it was like growing up on the _Groundbreaker_ and how the little miscreant manages to hold himself together. 

“Can you give us a few minutes unless you hear an attempted murder in progress?”

Felix nods and gives a small smile of encouragement, watching her all the way. She shuffles back down to the camp where Max is lying flat on his back watching the stars emerge for the night. He looks shellshocked but absorbed, and flinches when she reaches him. 

“Max,” Alex seats herself near him, not wanting to break his reverie. 

“Captain, I owe you more of an apology,” Max says, sitting up on his elbows. 

“I owe you a little bit of an explanation too, I think,” Alex says, sheepishly feeling along the seam of her shirt. “I uh—it’s not exactly cold, but it might help,” she explains, passing him two beers, one to hold against his face, one to drain. 

Max piques an eyebrow and Alex doggedly ignores how appealing it is on his features, blooming bruises or not. He accepts the beers but refrains from slapping the cold metal against his aching jaw.

“Uh, only Felix knows so far, but, um. Oh, fuck. I’m a colonist from the _Hope_ , 99 years old, and baffled by every single thing in Halcyon.” 

Max laughs and it’s a more genuine sound than his usual active-listening simulations of interest. 

“Cool. I’m not fucking kidding. Welles revived me. I want to help the rest of the colonists. That’s what we’re after.” 

Max stops laughing and sits fully up, facing her. He studies her face in that unnervingly focused way he has, breathing so evenly he has to be consciously measuring his breaths. 

“Alex, the _Hope_ was the greatest loss of The Crossing. Nobody knows where it is.” 

“Correct. Except for Welles.”

“Alright. How’d you end up in Edgewater?”

“He obviously stole my assumed-corpse, so he jettisoned me there to not get caught.”

“Mmm,” Max gives her a long look, but it isn’t outright disbelief. 

Alex doesn’t flinch outwardly, but her stomach jolts as he reaches for her, capturing her jawbone in one hand. Hopefully this wouldn’t end with them trying to choke each other out again, so she suffocates any reaction and lets him do it. 

He scrutinizes her to ruin—furrowed brow, careful cataloging of each of her features. Her lower lip is swollen from their struggle before, and he brushes it with the pad of his thumb.

Her eyes flicker shut for a second at that—the only sensations against her mouth since she woke had been impact, tolerance of what passed for food in Halcyon, and prodigious numbers of cheap alcohol bottles butting against her mouth on the way to intoxication. Her body isn’t an open channel with her mind, for just a moment, and she experiences the stark feeling of contact over a subtly sore wound shooting down her spine and coiling in her core.

Alex snaps her eyes open to meet his. He looks thoughtful, which is exactly how Max always looks, and she wants to roll her eyes as he withdraws his hand. A quieter part of her wants to tackle someone warm into the dirt and fuck until they can’t move—nothing to make you ache for touch like two separate small and unintentional tastes of it. 

“I believe you, Alex,” he offers. “I’m sorry I misled you so selfishly. Thank you for telling me.” He sounds formal, restrained. Under that, he sounds deeply astray. 

She wants to ask him what he saw in her face, what he was looking for. She wants to stroke his bruised jaw with the tips of her fingers and watch him for a reaction. She truly wants to crawl into his lap and devour him; take the rest of his faith. But she felt at least a bit responsible for her crew and their well-being, and her growing desire to be obliterated by a man with the self-control of a rabid sprat couldn’t be expressed. Not a single one of the crew had a place in the world anymore, and forming a place together felt febrile and precarious, like she was looking at it through imperfect glass. 

“We should all rest so we can get back to the ship early. I’m sure I’m not the only one quite finished with this planet,” Max stands and offers her a hand.

Alex nods, jerking back to herself and rising, awkwardly nodding at his hand but not accepting it. She can’t handle one more jolt of touch tonight or she’ll overload and fizzle out. 

“Thanks for setting up camp,” she tries weakly, grimacing at herself as she turns to burrow into a tent, hopeful sleep will come quickly in the dark.


	2. Flirtations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is set after The Empty Man for Max; but before Vision Quest on Scylla. He HAS discovered his life was a lie; he HAS NOT yet freaked his bean with hermit incense.
> 
> They're back to their routine on the _Unreliable_ after camping on Monarch.

“Oh, fuck,” Max sighs out, leaning forward to ash his cigarette and pointedly avoid the scene in front of him. 

Felix was in the middle of some display of tossball-reflexes with the Captain, refusing to give her the final clean coffee mug and doing quite a vertical wrestle to avoid her capture. Nyoka sighed next to Max, got up, rolled her eyes, and retreated to her room, leaving Max to witness it. Felix has Alex trapped in his arms when Max looks back over, holding the mug just out of her reach with one arm. Their wriggling left them both a little disheveled, and Max looked like he was having trouble deciding where to look. 

Faster than it started, Felix hits the kitchen floor with a resounding wham, sprawled out but cradling the mug cautiously. He’d been flipped completely over her shoulder somehow, and the Captain’s placing her foot on his chest when Felix yells.

“Max, 3, 2, 1!” And the mug is sailing towards him, destined to shatter if he doesn’t catch it. He drops his cigarette in the tray and receives it, somehow, narrowly avoiding Alex’s interception and becoming a tacit aggressor. 

“Vicar,” Alex starts, Felix entirely forgotten on the floor. She advances towards him and extends her hand. Max takes a sip from his own mug, not relinquishing it yet. The Captain’s single-minded focus was flustering enough when it wasn’t directed at him—her swaying towards him, ready to scuffle for it was an entirely different sensation entirely. He had a flurry of ideas, ways to make her earn it and desperately wished this had all started somewhere more private. Maybe he’d instruct her to crawl to him for it. 

_Fuck, stop!_ He takes another sip of coffee, hoping he can temper his impulses with more alertness. He does NOT return her gaze. He hopes that gets across. 

Someone slightly more awake had, in fact, already done just that, popping up in the chair beside him from under the kitchen table. Felix was reaching for the mug with confidence when Max jerked it away, eliciting a pout that had him right back to where he started. If Max had noticed, there's no way he would have been able to disguise his expression. 

“Come onnnn,” Felix starts to whine, shifting his side against Max and brushing fingertips across his thigh. “I'm only planning on staying around for the night,” he starts, the same line he’d used to seduce a particularly gullible bartender on Terra earlier in the week. Max had roasted him into a crisp for it, so he figured it wasn't too heated to repeat.

“I'm not Terran,” Max summons derisively, begging his body to do anything other than jump at the touch. _He’s just being a little shit, he doesn't even sense it._ Max thinks, assuaging his own guilt.

Felix slips his knuckles higher and tries: “I can't possibly repay you for the help. I'll still need that back, though,” he teases, a second hand starting to tease at Max’s wrist. He’s grinning and it’s playful and Max is extremely hopeful one of them will drop dead before they have to resolve any of the tension Felix may or may not be registering. He struck Max more like a rapt spitter fanning its frill at an interested party—just Alex, though. 

Alex descends and snatches her mug from Felix before either can move, scampering away to fill it. Felix hops up, breaking the moment, ready to negotiate for the freshly-poured cup when Alex darts out a tongue like a horrid sprat and licks it. Like a kid marking their snack—which is, regrettably not at all what it makes Max thinks of—Alex looks triumphant.

“Oh, come on! Captain!” Felix protests, clearly defeated. He spins and looks to Max for support. 

Max chuckles and rises, giving a great performance of nonchalance as he retreats to his bunk, white-knuckling his mug all the way.


	3. Tribulations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May slip a chapter about the night Felix and Alex have in here soon :)

Not for the first time, Max hears a soft moan from the stairwell as he returns to the ship. 

_Plenty of curious and agile people on the ship, no reason they shouldn’t spend the evening hours pleasantly,_ he forces himself to think, as if someone might hear it.

As he’s ascending, he realizes he can discern the moans pretty well after fighting alongside the group. It sounds mysteriously like Felix and the Captain, stage-whispering at each other between loud kisses that sound as if there’s collateral damage with each collision. 

"Well, that's a new pair," he murmurs to himself. 

Sighing hard, feeling less in control of himself every day since finding Chaney, he retreats to gaze down the stairwell. Alex is wedged onto a workbench, head tossed back and mouth open, with Felix pressed along her front. Her arms are thrown around his back, and his hand is exceptionally busy in her pants.

She snakes a hand down, evidently getting a grasp on Felix and beginning to stroke. He’s fussy as expected, and the noises they each try to hush in turn leave Max’s spine rod-straight. 

Where anyone else would flee to their bunk and bash their cock until sleep came, Max chose to be far more annoying than that. He couldn’t articulate quite why if pressed; he’d been in cramped quarters plenty throughout his life. Maybe he wanted to revel, too. Maybe he just liked fucking with people. He feigns fetching something from the lockers by the cockpit, taking his time.

Letting his footfalls resound, Max filters back up the ladder, passing without giving them notice. He imagines how they freeze together, hearing their quiet attempts to control their breath, and slinks off to the kitchen to find several drinks. 

———

When Felix stumbles into his bunk hours later, Max is reading in his bed and furrows his brow at the intrusion. 

“What’re you doing here?” Felix asks, not confrontational, as he sheds his jacket and tosses it over a chair. 

“Well, generally, when someone has a bunk and spent the day covered in Mantiqueen…fluid, one generally spends the minutes before sleep in that bunk,” Max explains. His hair is still drying from the shower, and he hasn’t put a shirt on just yet.

Felix looks around, adjusting, and realizes the incorrect tossball team poster is on the wall. 

“Did you change my poster?” Felix asks, still convinced he’s in his own room. 

“Certainly did, also took care to bring over all my worldly possessions.” The Vicar is doing a decent job of reading his book as he speaks. 

“Ah, shit, I’m sorry,” Felix stands, swaying generously, and Max rises to steady him.

“Hey, hey, please don’t die in here,” Max mumbles, catching him by the shoulder. Max notices how dark his eyelashes are, and the slightly unfocused gaze beneath them.

“Where’s Alex?” he asks softly.

“Why?” Felix asks, suddenly confident who they’d heard on the stairwell before.

“Mm,” Max dismisses, not having any type of answer prepared. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

Felix could melt under the touch of Max’s elegant fingertips on his ribs, one arm thrown over the Vicar’s shoulders as he guides him. When they reach his bunk, which, to his credit, is immediately across from Max’s, Max deposits the gangly kid on his bunk and kneels to help him get out of his boots. Felix’s mouth goes dry, and when Max looks back up at him to assess whether or not Dr. Fenhill would murder him for waking her just to be sure he isn’t concussed, a warm mouth collides with his. 

Max doesn’t reciprocate until Felix grips a fistful of his hair. They awkwardly crush into the bunk’s frame together, and Felix tastes so unambiguously like someone who’d spent the night with his mouth on someone that Max shudders. 

“You’re hammered,” he comments, pulling back and wanting nothing more than to push the handsome idiot down on his mattress so he can keep tasting him. 

“I am!” Felix replies, like it’s nice of him to notice, and protests when Max pushes him down only to withdraw quickly, out into the hall. Stung by the retreat, Felix rolls over, his head spinning. Felix hears Max return, fussing with something, and he spins in his bunk inelegantly as water and painkillers are placed next to him. 

“Thank you, Max,” he breathes, wishing he had the strength or coordination to get up and pin the Vicar against his wall. 

Max inclines his head in the doorframe, and Felix’s disappointment is temporarily staunched by the look of his profile in the dim hallway light. 

———

Max shuffles back into his bunk, wide awake, and tugs on an old tossball jersey. He hadn't worked up to wearing his vestments since Alex subdued the living shit out of him in Fallbrook. Sitting at his desk, he fiddles with the edges of the nearest book, thumbing the fabric for a few idle seconds. 

Quietly, aware that his door opening and closing is generally enough to wake their ornery doctor, he rifles through the fridge nearest himself and lands on brandy the captain swiped off of Dr. Fenhill's parents' entry table. 

He can't be anywhere near his bed and doesn't want to return Felix's jacket to him or even look at it, so he leans against the kitchen table and takes long, purposeful swigs of the amber liquor. 

Max doesn't have a name or a verse for the feeling he has, so he continues feeding it alcohol like it's a flagging fire in need of accelerant. He has to make the effort of his life to stop thinking about how Felix kisses, with his entire self exposed, open and easily. Maybe they were just getting along less like a church on fire now that Max's core understanding of his place in the universe had been neatly combusted. He supposed Felix wasn't calling him Preacher Man any longer, which was progress, and all that did was make him think of how Felix teased in that voice, taunting him with titles. It made Max shift uncomfortably, and when Alex had caught on and started to underscore her orders with a low "Vicar," he'd fled the room in a way that looked like disagreement and was the opposite. 

His mind circles the drain on thoughts of how they must have looked together after he'd glimpsed them. Max rises and moves to a cabinet to scrounge for a glass. Sure, he could have done so earlier, but it was really in everyone's interest that he get drunk as fast as possible. He measures out another...several fingers of the brandy and keeps going, this time with an idea of how far. 

Max begins to think he may be encountering a new sensation. He also thinks that in prison or on Edgewater, he might have dealt with this nuisance already with the nearest willing accomplice. He'd resolved plenty of petty crushes that way, when he thought he had a purpose and a plan.


	4. Relief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The part Max doesn't hear.

Alex shakes as Felix works another finger into her, hissing out an affirmation. 

Felix looks up at her on the bench, kissing her neck and jaw carelessly as he listens for her reactions. She’s biting the hand not braced on his shoulder to keep quiet. 

“Good? That enough?” He asks, hurtling towards just bending her over the workbench, crewmates be damned. 

“No, fuck no, it’s not,” Alex hisses at him, getting her hand into his pants and stroking lightly. Felix drops his forehead against her as his back arches involuntarily. He is already far too close, and he tries to focus on the stretch of his fingers inside Alex. 

Breathing against each other more than kissing, Felix’s hand coated in how wet she’s become, Alex stills immediately when the sound of footsteps from the staircase near the cargo hold catch her attention. Felix freezes against her, making eye contact with an intensity to it that isn’t about getting caught. Her legs start to quiver with the effort of remaining tucked around Felix’s waist, not wanting to shift on the creaky surface of the much-hammered-upon bench. 

Even as Max comes into view but conducts himself as if there is nothing of note in the cargo bay, Felix starts to move within Alex again, incredibly slow and perhaps even gentle. 

Alex huffs a breath in through her nose, flexing around him. He’s watching her closely, his mouth ghosting over hers with each exhale.

She watches Max recede, hears his steps confirm his retreat in the hallway above them. 

“My quarters, five minutes, be sneaky,” Alex breathes, disentangling them and darting out of the cargo bay before Felix can scramble to tuck himself away, looking around like he’d already been caught. He had. 

Felix is suddenly stricken by the idea of passing the next five minutes. Generally he’s quite adaptable, flitting from crew member to crew member with ease, drifting in and out of their daily habits. Five minutes was, first off, not enough time to get his dick down to a suitable level of visibility in his pants. Second, all the inertia in his body, possibly multiplied by the speed of the ship outside, was stretching towards her room, and he found himself suddenly nervous.

Afraid he couldn’t pass the captain’s quarters without kicking in the door and fucking her on the floor whether he remembered to close it or not, he opts to scramble up the ladders by the engine room to take a shot in the kitchen. He’s nervous, and realizing they’d been shockingly sober when she finally put her mouth over his jabbering one, his haze is just lifted enough to evaluate his own anxiousness. He wants it to be all excitement, but a nagging corner of his thoughts tug him towards worrying about his place on the _Unreliable_. Alex would never hold it over him and he expected her to always be pleasant, but if something got weird, Felix knows himself enough to be fearful of his own need to fade out of sight. 

It looks like a stressed boarst has been at one of the fridges. Max is nowhere in sight, but Felix suspects it may have been Nyoka anyway. He inches towards their bunks to peek in and check on her, finding her upright but asleep at her table. Satisfied that she’s not throwing up or dead, he collects a heavier bottle from the counter and pours out a measure of a room-temperature brown liquor. It goes down quickly, tastes…fine, and Felix keeps glancing up at the clock in the kitchen as if he can’t keep time by the blood pounding in his ears.

At a little past four minutes, Felix rushes down the stairs and taps on the captain’s door. It swishes open and he’s tugged inside, pressed against her bunk in the dim planet glow. They kiss inexpertly, running on intention and each other’s reactions. Alex’s palms soak heat into Felix’s chest as she tears off his vest, tossing it away and leaning back as he gets out of his shirt hastily, limbs unpredictable. His hands are instantly at her shirt, tugging it up over her head, disrupting her braid in the process. 

“Down,” she says, breathing with their foreheads linked. She nudges him with one hand before bringing both above her topless form to unravel her hair. Felix kicks his shoes away recklessly, not breaking their mutual appraisal of each other as he lowers himself into her bunk. 

The moment her hair is loose around her shoulders, he surges back up and drags her on top of him by the wrist, pinning her right wrist behind her with the left when they land together. It forces her to balance by rocking her hips against him, and he groans around an endearing little smile, fingers fluttering on her wrists.

Felix lets her tilt forward enough to kiss her, feeling emboldened enough to nip at her lower lip. 

“Felix,” she starts, resting her head against his in frustration, unable to hold her midsection up like this. 

“Yeah, boss?” he says, lower and rougher than usual. 

“I want to fuck you interminably, strand ourselves somewhere for a week; but I _need_ you right now, no matter what. Please, please just fuck me,” Alex says. 

Felix releases her wrists, careful to soothe them in the opposite direction of how they’d been straining before rolling her beneath him. They make a concerted effort to remove their pants, both thrashing a bit more than was dignified, knees colliding more than once. Alex gets everything to her calves and Felix happily tears the fabric from her as he crawls back over her. 

Falling on her with greedy open-mouthed kisses, tongue chasing the roof of her mouth, Felix nudges her legs open, bringing them together at last.

He means to tease her longer, drag himself along the wet folds surrounding him with heat. Alex secures her legs around his waist quickly, though, and ready as she is, pulls him inside of her to the hilt, crying out in relief. Felix bites her shoulder as he braces over her, shivering eagerly as her nails scrape patterns into his back. 

“Fuck, Alex,” he growls out, finding a harsh rhythm only eased by a full day spent teasing one another, spurring this on. 

Alex wraps her slender palm around the back of his neck, guiding him to kiss her, completely pliant for him. She snatches his left hand, clumsily shoving it towards her breast, asking silently. He immediately complies, teasing one nipple slowly and moving to the next at a languorous pace. 

“Hard,” she breathes, intentionally digging her fingertips into his nicely-toned arms to provoke him. 

Felix pulls back wordlessly, yanking her hips up as he sits back on his heels. He drags Alex from tip to root, leaving indents that will echo on her hips for more than a week. The force of her clit colliding against him is perfectly timed, and she comes easily in his arms, crying out far more resonantly than she had hoped. She chokes on what feels like an euphoric sob, choked by raw pleasure after seventy years of suspended animation. 

“Hey, hey, boss, you alright?” Felix gathers Alex to his chest, not withdrawing yet but carefully cradling her face in the hand not holding their bodies together.

Alex covers his mouth, kissing him deeply, starting to rotate her hips below his, setting them along a restrained but increasing course. Felix doesn’t resist in the slightest when Alex gets him on his back, just arcing luxuriously into the feeling of being ridden. Alex plants her hands beside his shoulders, getting a little more leverage to properly ride him. 

“Alex—” Felix starts to say something, but Alex slams her palms onto his wrists so quickly it stings, sealing their mouths together. When they gasp for air, he’s covered in a sheen of sweat the same as she is.

“Alex,” Felix starts, mouth slightly open, hair mussed. “Fuck, so good, please, fuck,” he finishes incoherently, dragging her mouth back to his. 

“Can I make you come like this?” Alex asks, referring to the logistics, not the probability.

“So close,” Felix unhelpfully informs.

“I’m going to hold you down and fuck you until you come for me, Felix,” Alex tells him, hips rolling above his in precise waves. 

Felix squirms, tilting his chin up towards her, directly on the edge as she ceases taking him rhythmically and grinds down brutally on him. He knows he’s suspended until she says otherwise, and he’s relieved when he feels her pulsing through another powerful orgasm around him. Once she’s shivering less desperately, she resumes her pace, fussier and more sensitive now than ever. It’s not long before he’s writhing beneath her, face given to pure bliss, mouth working wordlessly. He moans Alex’s name, gasping expansively as he orgasms within her. Alex gazes at him admiringly as he stills, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth before rolling to one side.

Felix remains entangled around her, heat from his limbs soaking into her cooling skin. Alex feels the tug of sleep beckoning. She wants Felix to stay, wants to wake him in an hour and do it again, but Ellie had threatened to round everyone up for drinks on the Groundbreaker and Alex would rather not receive that visit with her naked crewmate bending her over the desk. 

Nudging his nose with hers, Alex gets pulled into a lazy kiss, deliberate breaths passing between them. 

“Ellie’s gonna bug us soon,” she urges.

“What if we just play dead, though?” Felix asks. His smile is adorable and Alex returns it.

“To our doctor?”

“Yeah, just turn off the lights and stay quiet,” Felix explains, kissing Alex’s neck. “I believe in us.”

Alex kisses him considerately, close to shivering at how good his hands feel roaming all over her. She thinks of not really being aware of her skin since waking, and the rolling warmth of his touch is easy to lean into. He’s even worse, nuzzling into her touch wherever he can get it, the need for contact plain on him all the time. Her bed ensconces them and kisses devolve into cuddling; soft nuzzling into sleepy a sleepy doze.

—

A few minutes later, Ellie knocks on the captain’s door.

With no answer, she tries again the next time she circles up the stairs to locate Nyoka. 

Nyoka in tow, Ellie tries one last time.

“Captain, gonna head out like we said!”

The door swishes open, light spilling out from inside. Fully-clothed, reasonably put-together Felix strides out into the hall, greeting everyone with a relaxed smile. Alex follows behind him, looking believably innocent until she winks at Nyoka. 

“You’re in a persistent mood, doc,” Felix chides Ellie.

“You promised us a first round, so,” Nyoka adds.

“My resplendent huntress,” Felix praises with a grin, “That ship has launched. It is in orbit. All rounds henceforth are second.” 

“Gross. Nice,” Ellie says, looking at the captain for any signs that she’d just inverted Felix’s center of gravity. Nothing—nonchalant walk, normal conversation, a strange lack of commentary from SAM as he joins the group. Ellie would have found it creepily detached if she’d been Felix, but he was aglow and focused on enabling a night of drinking.


	5. Accidents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, it's raptidon musk sex pollen time.

N-Rapt, it turns out, hits hard and is orally communicable. Parvati shrieked and decried it as creating “kissing zombies,” shutting herself in her bunk when the Captain came back aboard. 

Naturally, the Captain actuated the fucking thing when they’d found it for their contact, and Nyoka had to bodily haul her off Stellar Bay’s landing pad to prevent further attempts to accost said contact for less business-related purposes. 

Tossing her into the cargo hold, Nyoka groans in anticipation as the Captain rolls and regains her feet, proudly announcing:

“I have excellent news! Literally everyone is invited to fuck me!” With her arms widespread, it’s clear nobody is moving fast enough. She starts tearing her own shirt off and is in motion as she unclasps her belt. 

Max is frozen over the workbench, as if remaining motionless will prevent her from identifying his position. It doesn’t, and three seconds later Nyoka is trying to help detangle the rabid Captain from Max’s vestment clasps. Alex has him pinned against the workbench with one knee against his hip, and even with two people trying to contain her she can’t be kept from roaming her hands all over him. 

Suddenly, the onslaught stops and Max just barely catches Alex as she goes limp. Looking up, Ellie is withdrawing a needle from her neck, heaving a sigh of relief that the sedative actually took. 

“Let’s get her to bed,” Nyoka says, joining Max for the short trip in case she wakes up. “She manage to kiss you?”

“Nope, I’m still human,” he confirms, turning the corner to her quarters. 

Alex is fully unconscious, so he’s able to set her down in bed and retreat quickly, slamming the lock on the way out. 

“You look ruffled for a dude I just saw snap a rapt’s neck with his bare hands this week,” Nyoka comments, shoving an Algae Lager into Max’s hands as the three of them retreat to the kitchen. 

“Will it hold?” Max asks. 

“Eh. Worked long enough for us to get her contained while I learn more about this fresh hell,” Ellie mumbles, hunched over her medical pad. 

“Captain, you’re back! I got you an extra copy of the magazi—“ Felix’s voice drifts up the stairs through the hallway to the kitchen, cutting off with a telling thump. 

It’s silent for a second as they rise to check on the situation, and then:

“He—help? Help. Help. Don’t need help,” Felix gets to murmuring, eyes glazing with the captain working through his clothes efficiently. He's earnestly helping with her belt, happy to be there. 

“Fuck,” Ellie grumbles, snatching him by his collar and jerking her head towards Nyoka. 

“Max, she’s all you,” Ellie orders, dragging Felix into the hall and cracking him on the wrists as he paws at her. 

“Oh,” he says, initially sounded abashed. Ellie realizes it’s worse when he holds out his wrists to her, as if to be bound. “We can do it like that,” he offers with intent. 

Nyoka's knee to his back shoves him past Ellie and into his bunk, slamming his door closed with a swift palm. 

They hear a muffled sound of frustration (and likely his head against the door) as they retreat to see if Max has survived. He’s sitting opposite her door, which has a stray tossball stick wedged against the lock, cigarette in mouth, vestments rumpled and open. He gives a terse little wave and takes another drag.

“She get you?” Nyoka tests. 

Max just scrubs his face with one hand. 

“Someone should tell Parvati what’s happening in case she’d like to flee. Are there advance directives for this sort of thing, Ellie?” 

“Yeah, I mean, it’s not a Byzantium orgy, dude,” she scoffs. “Are you saying you’d rather me let you die than accidentally fuck someone?” 

“Wait, they can die from this?” Max exclaims, shooting to his feet. 

“No, because you have a doctor, right here. But, yes, if left to their own devices they could technically fuck each other to death.”

“What the fuck does ‘technically’ mean?” Nyoka’s eyebrows portray more concern than she’s letting into her voice. 

“Oh, just that they could die of dehydration or like, liver failure before it wore off. Forget to eat. Get overheated. Frenzy drugs and all that,” Ellie dismisses. 

“Can we help them?” Max urges, lighting another cigarette. He offers one to Nyoka on instinct now—they were a great, violent team in the field and becoming supportive enablers of one another elsewhere. He gestures with the packet to Ellie, who tucks away the packet she’d been ready to proffer and accepts. As they file back to the kitchen, they hear a strangled but probably not unpleasant cry from Felix’s room, followed by a thump and a slide down the wall.

“He’ll probably tire himself out,” Ellie comments, snatching three fresh Algae Lagers from the fridge and distributing them across the table, rings of sticky spilled beer left beneath them. 

“What about Alex?” Nyoka heaves her boots onto the table, rocking her chair back on two legs. 

“Too anxious. Felix isn’t even aware there are other people on the ship by now; she seems to be, so she'll likely just scream herself to sleep,” Ellie diagnosed.

“That can’t possibly be the best way to get her through this,” Max comments.

“Yeah? Volunteering?” Nyoka snorts. 

“Of course not!” He protests; thinking he probably oversold it. 

Nyoka and Ellie both raise an eyebrow and swig their drinks. 

“Let’s just keep a watch. Ellie, how long?” 

“Hours, probably. She barely crushed the vial but it leaked plenty before Nyoka vaporized it,” Ellie explained. “Probably not much longer for Felix, she only kissed him. It’s more a contact high than anything more systemic from what I'm learning here.”

“Great. So, shoot her on sight, or are you going to give us sedatives for self-defense?” Max is glaring, hazel eyes a little more far away. 

“Oh, definitely shoot her on sight,” Ellie offers, dealing syringes across the table like cards. “I’ll…sit over here, with some music, in case Felix emerges. I think Alex…well, she’s stronger than our boy wonder.”

Nyoka rolls her eyes, grabs her beer and the sedative, and slumps towards the hallway, capturing another two beers from the fridge on her way. 

Max drains the rest of his beer and rises to follow when a clattering bottle-noise comes from the stairs. 

“Guys? Guys! Alex and the tossball stick aren’t here!” 

“You left a fucking weapon near her?” Ellie accuses, narrowing her eyes.

“No, I jammed the lock so she couldn’t attack anyone else,” Max growls at her. 

“Great work. Now she’s armed and somewhere on the ship. All according to _plan_ , Vicky.” Ellie turns to retrieve more sedatives from her bunk and collides with Felix, who’s re-dressed and looking sheepish.

Ellie releases a noise of frustration and shunts him out of the way. 

“I’m real sorry about that, Ellie,” Felix tries. Nyoka pats him on the shoulder when Ellie doesn't bother to reply. 

“Bigger fish, kid. Captain’s loose with a tossball stick.”

“Am I still fantasizing?” Felix asks. Max hums over a chuckle; the kid was far more self-deprecating than anyone gave him credit for. Not like he was about to give him credit for it where people could hear it. 

“I mean, she’s not violent towards us usually, would she be on n-rapt?” Felix addresses Ellie as she returns. His eyes are still wide and he still looks ashamed, but nobody has brought up the captain body-tackling him into extremely public intimacy, so he's enjoying the little victories. 

“No idea. She lives and breathes unresolved tension, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she tries to deck someone as a mating ritual,” Ellie commented. 

The four of them closed ranks, covering each other’s blind spots like they were hunting on Monarch. Max got momentarily lost in the memory of the captain fistfighting him out of murdering Chaney, respect burgeoning for her. Later on the Unreliable, he’d tried not to think about her straddling him in the dirt, fist colliding with his jaw, but sleep evaded him until he’d given in and quickly jerked off to the thought of her wiry body pushing him into the earth. He certainly had to try not to think about it now when it was mere minutes ago that she pinned him the same way, tearing at his vestments. 

“Oh, there y’all are—“ Parvati popped her head out of her bunk.

Four shouts collided at once.

“Get back in there!”

“Parv, no!”

“Captain’s loose on n-rapt!” 

“Hide!” 

Her door whooshed shut efficiently, and they saw her light switch off. It was ghostly.

“SAM?” Nyoka called.

“Is there a mess? Send in the best!” SAM chimes cheerfully, rounding the corner. 

“SAM, we need you to get to ADA and tell us where the captain is,” Nyoka instructs.

“I’ll shine this up in no time!” SAM retorts, a little off-target as usual.

“Wait, doesn’t his programming have to define our requests as messes to execute?” Felix asks once his heavy metal steps have retreated. 

“Yes. Yes, he does,” Max replies. 

“I mean, Alex did spill the n-rapt,” Nyoka tries.

“Nah. We’re a collective mess. Good enough for SAM,” Ellie shrugs. 

“I should probably say this; if you stab her with sedative, make sure you miss the artery or she could overdose,” Ellie explains, palming a syringe to Felix. 

“How bullish on stabbing the captain do we feel?” Max inquires. 

“Depends on whether or not she’s swinging at us,” Nyoka clarifies. 

“Crew, I’m pleased to inform you that the Captain is on the bridge, inputting transit directives. Please proceed here quickly. Thank you!” ADA sings. 

“Lock her in, ADA!” Nyoka yells as they spill down the stairs together.

“I cannot take orders from any life form other than Captain Alex Hawthorne,” she calmly intones.

“SAM tell ADA to lock her in!” Nyoka talks over ADA. 

In the bridge, the captain’s head jerks up as she’s typing on the terminal and notices her crew. She’s sweating and a little ragged, but apparently not feeling up to pouncing on sight any longer. 

Felix sprints forward at tossball-finisher speeds and jams a syringe into her neck, pressing the plunger down well clear of her artery. She sighs and goes limp, slumping into Felix’s arms like a rag doll. 

Felix hands her off to Max, who easily slings her over one shoulder while studiously placing his grip well above her lower back. They squint into the transit terminal and see a jumbled string of letters that once aspired to be “Byzantium.”

“Even out of control, she has expensive taste in hedonism,” Max comments, retreating from the bridge.

“Someone be ready to stab her if she twitches, please,” he says as he brushes past Nyoka and Ellie, limp captain’s arms swishing from side to side as he carries her up the stairs.

“Uppity. Plenty of perfectly pretty options on space stations away from the corporate eye of the storm,” Felix whined to Nyoka. 

“Or Monarch, you elitist,” Nyoka countered. 

“Elitist? ELITIST?” Felix was set to screeching as they rounded the corner to the kitchen. Max and Ellie deposited the captain back in her room.

“Wait,” Max said at the doorway. He turned and removed her boots in the most efficient manner he could muster, Ellie watching hawkishly with a syringe gripped in one hand. 

“It’ll slow her down,” he explained, closing the door behind him and perching on the stairs to keep watch. 

To his surprise, Ellie dropped to the step next to him, offering her packet of cigarettes. They smoked companionably in silence, lulled by the sounds of the ship /not/ heading to Byzantium to bury the captain in eager paid company. 

“Do you think it’s weird to not have fucked in like, seventy years, or like, it doesn’t even register?” 

Max gaped. “Did she tell you?”

“Didn’t mean to. She was drugged after that Mantiqueen gored her leg, and it all bubbled out of her. I thought she was just one of those who gets real imaginative on the table, but the more weird shit she does, the more I believe we have a _Hope_ colonist on our hands,” Ellie exhaled a breath of smoke she shouldn’t possibly have held in throughout her explanation. 

“She doesn’t seem to remember that I know, and I figure it’s her business. How do you know?” 

“Uh, well, in Fallbrook, after she stopped me from what would have been one murder among many committed in her company,” he grimaced. 

“She…apologized, I suppose, brought me two Algae Lagers, an extra for my jaw,” he admitted. He didn’t need to say more than that to Ellie, but he replayed the soft tone Alex had used when she'd been honest with him. How her face had looked in the waning light of the day; how her jaw felt in his palm.

"Do you think being suspended all those years made her reaction stronger?" Max was philosophically curious, and careful to reassure himself of it. 

"Oh, definitely," Ellie laughed, rising and patting Max on the shoulder before heading upstairs.


	6. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here it is; 'The Empty Man' quest. Blaze it.

“Well, Reginald lied to us, which is deeply unsurprising. She’s a buffoon, Max.” Alex is perturbed, fiddling with her pistol and eager to get back to the ship.

“No, she’s not! She’s a lady of transcendent wisdom, can you not see that?” Max counters. Alex gapes at him.

“Very astute. And I’m out here to meditate and contemplate the unendurable mystery without being bothered. So why are you bothering me?” the hermit asks. 

“We’re here for this book. Max?” Alex prods.

The hermit doesn’t let him open his mouth, waving her hands dismissively like she’s clearing smoke from a fire. 

“No, no. I can’t help. I can see you’re a man in a hurry. This volume, even if I did translate it, would take years for you to comprehend. You haven’t the patience.”

“I have spent my life in contemplation. I believe my mind is prepared to receive the truth.”

“Please,” Alex urges, leaning on her charming demeanor and lovely features, as ever.

“There is one way that can speed up the process. It involves a combination of several…ingredients, some of which can be fatal. It is not for the faint of heart, or the unprepared.” The hermit is either being deliberately cryptic or premeditating their murders.

“What happens if you’re unprepared?” Alex probes, shooting a glance at Felix, expecting nerves. He’s smiling to himself and shaking his head.

“Either hallucinations followed by unconsciousness and a headache, or raving insanity. Which can be fun in its own way.”

“Well, Max just said he’s ready, right?” Alex tilts her head just so, urging him to come forward. He obeys her without thinking, knitted though his brow is. 

“And I believe he may be right. There his both violence and peace warring inside you, Max. This process would be extremely tenuous for one such as yourself.”

“I’m committed, no matter the cost.”

“‘No matter the cost?’” Felix replayed. “We ain’t making you walk in front of a firing squad.”

“I’m committed to taking as many drugs as possible, so count me in as well,” Alex generously provides. 

The hermit’s wan face wasn’t exactly comforting, and Alex saw Felix cast another guarded glance her way as they left the room. 

Max looks even more unsettled, perching on a cushion skeptically and squinting at the smoke pouring from the devotional vase.

“The OSI has only gotten more mystifying with you, Vicar,” Felix comments, folding himself onto a cushion and companionably patting one near him for Alex.

“I don’t know if I’m that anymore,” Max comments, beginning to look faraway. He confidently leans forward and inhales, giving a twitchy little nod as he holds whatever it is in his lungs before sighing.

“Which one?” Felix asks. “OSI or Vicar?” He does as Max had shown him, wanting to ask when a corporate priest had the occasion to hallucinate before.

“Either,” Alex murmurs, following Felix’s lead. Max isn’t really engaging them, and they wait patiently, slumping shoulders against one another.

—

Max fans his fingers in front of his face, furrowing his brow with determination. Both Alex and Felix reach out to touch his fingers, but the room’s mesmerizing shimmering is becoming too oppressive to permit much movement. 

A little sprat manifests next to Felix, hopping about his crossed ankles amiably. He’s delighted by its presence, offering little scratches behind its ears when it appears to jump into his lap. Alex has a feeling his attention is spoken for during the next few minutes and startles when she notices a woman opposite them on the floor, serene and clean-cut. This can’t be the hermit.

“Not hermit,” she helpfully informs Max, pointing. 

“And not here,” Max declares, like he’s informing the thing of her rights. 

“If she’s a hallucination, why…am I seeing her too?” Alex gets out with substantial effort. 

“Same reason you see Felix’s sprat,” he says with confidence. It’s useless information, but his conviction makes Alex nod. Felix remains focused on his sprat, not looking up at his name.

“Maximillian,” the woman says. 

“Mother,” he replies. 

“Why are you still doing this? You’ve been fighting against the world since before you left home. Haven’t you figured out yet that the more you fight, the more pain you cause yourself?” she says. 

“I knew this was too good to be true. What’s happening to my voice? Does my voice sound weird to you? And what’s wrong with your face?” Max asks.

“What’s wrong? Can’t think straight? Now you know how I feel—wait, wuh…forget I said that,” Felix adds. Alex appraises him curiously. 

“We are obviously the victims of a tasteless joke being perpetuated…uhm, perpetrated? I mean, we’re being made fools of, aren’t we? I’m going to throttle this hermit on the way out,” Max declares, bristling but apparently unable to move much further than rocking forward.

“Maximillian, always ready to give up, to lash out. Always searching for answers, but always in the wrong place, never looking inside himself,” the elder DeSoto observes.

“You look inside yourself all the time. What with you head up your ass and all,” Felix mumbles. His sprat is gone, and he’s baffled.

Max gets out something about platitudes while giggling mysteriously over the word ‘figment,’ quieting down when the thing speaks again.

“Who said I wasn’t a figment of your mind? But you know the truth, you don’t need someone else to tell you. You’ve always known it. Everyone knows it, they just won’t see it. We’re overwhelmed with stories from our earliest days, the stories others tell us and the stories we tell ourselves,” she continues. “These stories are how we try to make sense of our lives, but they are not real. They’re just stories. You need to drop your story and see the truth.”

“I’ve got your story, Max. ‘I’m uptight! I love the church and I’m a stooge for the Board! And I don’t understand that Felix is a genius!” Felix imitates, making Alex chortle indiscreetly. Max is too absorbed to snap at him as he usually would.

“You want me to give up my discipline? My…control? But I can’t. I can’t. Without order there is chaos.”

“You need to love the chaos, Maximillian. Let it envelop you, take you where it will. Besides, you really have no choice, anyway.”

Alex gazes at the projection, unconcerned with Max’s distress for a moment. After obliterating a dude with her pod, she had certainly made choices so chaotic they scared her, but she'd always felt as if they were _choices_.

“No, that’s not true,” Max sounds desperate, not frustrated. “The basis of everything is order, not chaos! It’s true, I know it is. So did you! Why are you denying it? Before you died the Plan made you happy!”

“No. It didn’t. I made myself happy. There is nothing holding you back but you. If you can’t understand that, you will never understand anything. Goodbye, Maximillian.”

Max turns to Alex, face bedraggled. “This whole thing, it’s…it’s…just a farce, right? Just…just my own brain working against me?”

A vivid, greenish reflection of Max steps into their circle, greeting them. Felix jumps a mile and scrambles to his knees before Alex can yank him back down to the cushions. 

“Oh fuck,” she murmurs.

“What? Who…why do you look like me? Are you me?”

“Not really. I’m who you think you are. I am disciplined. Controlled. I have no doubts. And I don’t exist, yet you have judged yourself against me your whole life.” 

“Nice,” Felix comments with a lewd, confidential smirk at Alex and jerk of his head towards the hallucination. 

“Why do you berate yourself for not being me?” It asks. 

“Yeah Max,” Felix starts, loud before Alex shushes him. “Why do you do that,” he whispers.

“I don’t! I mean, that’s not how it is at all. I just…I don’t know.” Max protests. “Is it wrong to try to be a gooder…” Max shakes his head sharply, “…better person than I am?”

“But that’s not what you’re doing, is it? You’re desperately trying to find a story to organize reality in your head, a story to control everything.”

“A new story of the happy you. The contented you. Me," the green shimmering Max purrs.

“That’s not…it can’t be right. I’ve only been searching for the answer to the Equation. Because it will set us free. Won’t it?”

“How? By removing the need to make any decisions? To have your life completely controlled? The illusion of certainty? Your obsession allowed you to avoid the real question. Who are you?”

“I’m Max. ME! I’m real, you can’t convince me otherwise…please don’t convince me I’m not.”

Alex wants to go to him, but it’s a selfish impulse. She wants to take the churning uncertainty from him, pull him from it with her mouth and, fuck, she wants Felix to help. She settles for leaning against Felix and mentally tallying each insight she’d kiss away later.

“By the Architect…Architect? How could I have believed in an Architect? That’s ridiculous. I must be losing my mind completely…what you’re saying almost makes sense. We exist inside our thoughts, thinking we’re in control. That’s it…isn’t it? We have no control. Over anything. It’s all…lies. How could I not have seen this? But how do we escape ourselves?”

“I’m confused. And nauseous. But mostly nauseous. Do you think the hermit will mind if I throw up in the corner?” Alex asks, the wave of sickness receding even as she plans for it. 

“This is a waste of time. Let’s get back,” he says to Alex, who’s digging her head into Felix’s shoulder in order to sit upright. Well, mostly upright.

Alex recognizes a panic in Max’s eyes, ignoring the now-fading second Max and moving closer to him. She gets a shaky arm around his shoulders and squeezes like a snake who isn’t quite sure how to do this whole constriction thing. His arms go around her waist, and Felix adjoins himself to Max’s other side. 

“You’re doing great. Everything is great. Drugs are especially great,” Alex is really trying to pull out something Captain-ly and doing a truly shit job.

Max is too exhausted to process the press of them both against him, sighing. 

“Once this wears off, we should get back,” he says. 

“Of course,” Alex assents, withdrawing once she’s fearful he might need more space. She offers him a pilfered cigarette, lighting her own and flopping back against a cushion to wait for the sensation to fade. She certainly couldn’t bullseye a spitter if they were ambushed with the way her head felt now, and Felix looked near-catatonic. Max remains upright, swaying and only accepting a cigarette once Alex had tapped him once, twice, lit it for him, and passed it directly in front of his face on the third try.


	7. Clarifications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The babes are taking a minute on The Groundbreaker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is an already-published fic from my other pseud. Melding my storylines together.

“So, so…what?” Alex slurs, reaching for the intolerable purple berry liquor and making a good effort at refilling Felix’s cup. Witnessing the sticky purple ichor pool around the base of his glass, Ellie generously takes the bottle and refills the rest of the crew’s glasses more deftly. 

“So what I’m saying is, Boss, is that we maybe have a moral responsibility to get you to a tossball game, because it’s like…It’s, like the defining pleasure in this galaxy,” Felix explains in a belabored voice. They’d spent all week blasting through Mantiqueens on Monarch, and the whole crew consenting to get momentously smashed together was a rare occasion. The Lost Hope greeted them with the bustling familiarity of a bar where you more often found a fight than a friend, and the crew had quickly shouldered to a back booth, following in SAM’s wide wake. 

Max’s eyes narrow across the table, studying the captain. Alex is hammered, swaying against Nyoka intermittently. Her hair, a pastel shade of Nyoka’s color, is arranged in braids pinned atop her head, little errant strands waving near her jaw, her brow. He’s trying not to watch each one, marking where it hits her high cheekbones, so he gazes down into his glass and takes another determined sip.

“Yeah? Does anyone still eat good _food?_ Have you found any planets with an actual _cuisine_? I’m not even asking for a ‘defining pleasure’ just something other than pure displeasure!” Alex counters, fussily rearranging a leg tucked underneath herself in her excitement.

“Sure, but I don’t see any of us getting access to Board Preferred Supplies anytime soon,” Parvati replies, appending it with a small eyeroll. 

“The—the, the fucking _what?_ ” Alex grouses.

“Board Pref—“

“Yeah, yeah, are you telling me _corporates_ don’t have to live like this?” Alex gestured wildly to her sloshing, entirely-too-viscous-drink, held aloft. 

“They also get all the Board-approved serials before the general public,” Parvati says in a monotone, like she’s breaking the last bad news there is to break.

“…Humans still get laid, right?” 

“Oh, Law, no. We’ve evolved much beyond something so primitive, and so much more efficient,” Max begins, waving his hands dismissively and catching Felix’s eyes before the kid can break. 

Alex glares at him, scrutinizing. 

“It’s only been seventy fucking years, that’s not how—you’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” she glances around—Nyoka delivers a serious look, much to her credit. Alex can’t help but give Parvati a wondering look of comprehension. 

“I–“ he opens his mouth, interrupted by Junlei reaching the edge of their table. Parvati sighs in relief, taking her hand and rising. Alex smiles softly at the sweet blush that’s sprung up as Junlei passes around her greetings and apologies for “thieving the bright star from the center of this galaxy.”

Next to her, Felix seems to swallow his own tongue in an attempt not to guffaw, though the facial strain can’t really be ignored. 

As the pair recede into the crowd of tipsy spacers, Ellie nudges Felix and points to her watch.

“Aren’t we supposed to meet ‘your guy’ in the Back Bays, in like, fifteen?” Ellie encourages. They’d heard about some AI-enabling parts for SAMs, and as in most black market endeavors, Felix naturally had a guy for the job. 

“Oof, fuck, SAM, let’s make tracks!” Felix shoots to his feet, Ellie and SAM in close pursuit. The Back Bays are an easy twenty-five-minute walk across the Groundbreaker. 

“Where’d Nyoka go?” Alex looks over her shoulder, finding her companion soliciting the bartender for another bottle.

Max sips his drink, trying to conceal a laugh. Looking over her shoulder again finds Nyoka very messily entangled with a handsome contractor, and Alex rounds on Max.

“Okay, if you people streamlined all of the fun out of sex, why do you still tangle faces?” Alex speaks in the triumphant tone of all drunks who think they’ve sorted something out. She’s pointing to Nyoka without any subtlety. 

“Me, personally? Oh, I’ve never,” Max’s mouth begins to pull at the corners. Alex narrows her eyes.

“Bullshit,” she half-pries. 

“Of course not, Captain,” Max retreats into his courteous, highly believable tone, eyes shifting away from Alex’s and to a group of six young corporatists, surrounding their table. Alex glances across the sea of humans to Nyoka, who is swiftly settling the tab she started with her new friend. 

“Do you mind taking a smaller table if it’s just the two of you? We’re celebrating!” says one of the sleekly dressed kids.

Max has already risen and jerks his head towards a small alcove, darting to claim it. 

Absorbing how quickly their party had shrunk, Alex smiles, snatches her glass and the bottle, and gestures to the booth. When she gets to the alcove, she has to precariously crawl over a small table to get to the far seat—really seemed like Max could have just moved over, but whatever.

Once she’s resettled, Alex asks, “So, Vicars have to be celibate? Explains the temper…”

Max starts chuckling into his drink, the only crew member really comfortable with holding her gaze. The slight lines at his eye corners are creasing, and Alex smacks his arm. 

“Unreal,” she says. 

“Of course we’re not celibate, do I seem like I could stand to seek the truth and control my impulses, all at once?”

Alex smiles and acknowledges him, refilling both their glasses more or less neatly. 

“Seems like you’ve got quite a few. I imagine whiskey isn’t particularly OSI-ordained?” 

“There are jokes in seminary about anointment. You can have fun if you’re clever,” he comments. 

“Not nice to prey on the new kid. Everything’s so far from what I know it’s making me gullible,” she confesses. 

“Well, people still fuck, I’m pleased to inform,” he teases, caustic and composed at once. 

“Yeah? What’s it usually go like, _‘Oh, Vicar, I am burdened by the need to confess? Hear my sins,”_ she makes a show of the line reading, pushing against him and pouting.

Max laughs it off, rolling his eyes. “Usually asking them to kneel is enough,”

Alex's eyes widen but she controls the rest of her face, mostly.

"I’m honestly just wondering how people go about it, and I didn’t terribly want to know how the rest of the crew careens into their youthful indiscretions. Gotta piss,” she mumbles, stumbling over his legs and away to the bathroom. 

Max takes a deep exhale as she goes, trying with all his might not to connect stray fantasies to her pretty mouth purring his name, however sarcastically. Well, _Vicar_ , but, effective enough. He definitely doesn’t cast a casual glance over his shoulder to watch her go.

When Alex returns, hops over his legs, and nestles back into her spot, Max starts, “Youthful indiscretions? Wait, you think we’re closer in age than you and, say, Felix?” 

Alex shrugs, “Maybe, maybe not, mostly outlook,” and sips her drink. 

“I’m close to fifty,” he sighs, and her eyebrows shoot up.

“So when was the last time?” she prods, brazen.

Max’s mouth works for a second before he furrows his brow. 

“I’m just drunk, I’m sorry. Seventy years, for me,” she jokes, relieved as his expression lightens. “I was twenty-nine, on Earth,” she volunteers.

“Merciful fuck,” he breathes. 

“Can I say something?” Alex starts, cautiously, placing one boot on the low table and then the other after a silence. 

“Do you mean, confess?” he says dryly, piquing an eyebrow. It’s uncomfortably handsome and Alex uses all her might to blow past it. The little quirk at the corner of his mouth is doing a lot of work tonight, and it feels like they’re squaring up. 

“I’m just glad someone else on this ship seems as fucking angry as I am,” Alex clinks her glass against his, and they drink silently until the bottle is empty.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can't any of you just count sprats until you're asleep?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I now have the fuel of too many writing projects to continue making progress on my writing projects. Apparently I can only compose when wildly stressed, waking up from 3am-5am to do my dark bidding.
> 
> So, here's whatever this is turning out to be!

Max sighs as he shakily slips into his bed, head sloshing here and there. He tries not to think about how directly at fault for his own circumstances he is. He could have encouraged her, and might even be stumbling towards her bed right this moment if he just gave in.

Down a level on the ship, Alex was slipping off her jacket and berating herself the same, slouching into her chair and staring out at the stars. _Why would you poke at him so much? Why can’t you be nice when you want to fuck someone?_ She could be straddling him and confirming her suspicions about his broad stupid fucking shoulders all the same if she could just act like a human instead of a snared rapt for one goddamn moment. 

_Although_ , she thinks, _if anyone else is ready to fight at the drop of a hat…_

It’s what animates her to stand and trudge through the ship even though she’s shucked her boots, and she doesn’t register how wide awake she feels until she finds herself in front of the Vicar’s door. 

“Fuck,” she murmurs. “Fuck fuck fu—“

Felix’s door slides open and he pokes his head out. The fact that he’s quite endearing is only amplified by the muffled sounds of an in-progress tossball game on his horrible little radio. It is after three AM on the Groundbreaker, after all.

“You okay, Boss?” he manages, still clearly hammered.

“Yeah, yeah…you get the part for SAM?” she places one foot on top of the other like it’ll hide the fact that she’s running around barefoot. 

“Yeah, he’s recalibrating or something now. Ellie locked him in before she went to sleep, so we should live through the night,” he replies with a soft smile. 

“Good work, good work,” she sputters. Felix kindly retreats, his door whooshing behind him. It’s silent, and she feels dumb and increasingly sober. She resolves to turn to the kitchen and rustle up more booze when she passes a door that wasn’t open before.

“Captain?” Max asks, seated at his desk with a book. He’s wearing the pants of his vestments and a shortsleeved shirt he’d bought on Monarch after a rapt spitter’s acid got through his jacket. It says “Oh, oh, oh, it’s Rizzo’s!” In a heinous purple-liquor font and it’s a little too tight. Desperate times and all that.

Alex freezes midstep and turns her head, leaving her body destined for the kitchen. It does not have the casual effect she’s hoping. “Hey!” 

“Can’t sleep?” 

“Mm,” she turns and tries to casually lean against his doorframe, succeeding only in triggering the lock and stepping inside to avoid being crushed. 

Leaning forward, he offers her something that looks like Steady Hand Cigarettes, but wafts something like incense. 

“What’re these, cloves?” she teases, accepting the chair opposite him and tilting forward to the lighter he’s extended. The first hit feels like being slammed against a wall by a marauder in heavy armor, and Max chuckles at her wide-eyed exhale. 

“It’s a little more exotic than that, makes you feel more calm, or so they tell me,” he accepts it and takes a hit that makes her efforts look witheringly small. 

Alex sinks back and tilts her head to take him in. _Fuck, he’s pretty._

Max smiles serenely at her, tilting his head in kind.

“OH. This is weed. This is space weed, isn’t it?” 

“I mean, it comes from a plant?” he suggests.

“No, I mean, it’s an Earth plant…” Alex stands, taking the cigarette from him and tracing patterns of smoke in the air. Maybe it feels different after cryosleep, because this is intense. 

Max watches her companionably, comfortable in silence especially because this wasn’t the first time they’d been stoned as all hell together. 

“Captain?” he asks as she thrusts the cigarette back at him and vaults to his mattress, folding her legs under her and leaning against its frame. “Alex?”

She gestures to the space across from her, feeling instantly stupid for inviting him to sit in his own bunk. If she was seducing him, it’s the only way she knew how and it could safely pass for the usual activities of two stoned, giddy idiots trying to get comfortable for the experience. 

Max joins her without hesitation, folding lean legs under himself and handing off to her once more. He breathes deeply, and Alex watches the expansions of his chest pointedly. 

“Better?” his voice is deep and assured, and she can almost feel it running through her with him this close. 

“No,” Alex says carefully, playing with a thread. “Can I be blunt?”

“Can’t you?” he inclines his head meaningfully.

“I, uh. Hm.” Alex pauses, reading his face. He’s watching her closely, and his eyes flick to her mouth enough for her to notice.

Her head is on a little straighter as the drug mellows into something resembling calm. They’ve both managed to slink somewhat lower, negotiating space to extend their legs while scrupulously ensuring they don’t touch each other. 

“I’m pretty fucked,” Alex trails off, gazing deeply at her hand. 

“That’s your blunt confession?” Max asks. 

“Hey man, I wasn’t awake smoking alone in here after downing a bottle,” she observes.

“You certainly are now. What were you scrounging for after we returned to the ship? Thought you’d called it a night,” Max explains, possibly sheepish at his terrible indoor habit. 

“Oh, uh. Well. Another beer. I don’t think it hits me as hard after cryo and I’ve always needed a little help to get it all to stop whirring,” Alex admits. “This, though,” she trails off. 

Max laughs and jerks his head to the shelving beside her. 

“Grab that,” he gestures.

“Is this like, a reliquary? The fuck is this for?” Alex murmurs, returning to where they’re sitting and fiddling with the top of an ornately designed OSI bottle.

“Can be if you’ve got the imagination, I suppose. It’s for getting drunk, Captain,” he explains, just as she manages to crack the top, releasing a pungent, unmistakable colonist’s whiskey from within.

“Can I ask why you keep it in something this creepy?” Alex takes a sip with his encouragement and hands it to him.

“I lived in a Vicarage, Alex, discretion has its place,” he says. 

“Well, you’re next door to at least one raging alcoholic so it may not always be like that,” she toasts him with the bottle he passes her. 

“Cassock feeling weird?” Alex nods at the horrid Rizzo’s shirt he’d forgotten he was wearing. 

“To be honest, I’ll be thrilled to recycle it. Just need pants the next time we’re near anything but a vending machine,” he gestures to his chest. 

“My name’s not Alex,” she confides quite suddenly. He can’t tell if it’s meant to be reciprocal for so personal an inquiry, but he chooses to receive it as such anyway.

“Don’t worry, nobody thinks so,” he says, kindly, but pauses for her correction.

“I don’t remember what it was. And Welles didn’t tell me. And now it’s easy,” Alex shrugs. 

“I’m sorry,” he replies, courteous in tone, watching her closely.

“Don’t be. Something tells me it’s better, like this, no doors to go knocking on,” she says quietly. 

“Probably astute,” he says huffing out a soft laugh. “Speaking as a reformed man who’s quit knocking on doors, of course.”

She felt giddy with the combination of adrenaline, nicotine, and alcohol, and the unambiguous visual contact from her terribly handsome Vicar. He’d been mostly silent earlier tonight, just taking her in while Felix fawned openly. 

“What’re your plans tonight, Vicar?” she topped off his glass, watching him raise an eyebrow. They’d been drinking for nearly seven hours—he was certain if he stood it wouldn’t be for long.

“Survival, penance, penitence, the usual sequence,” he managed, always punching up at banter with the Captain. “You? Felix?” He didn’t feel jealous. Just…earnest. Besides, the kid was quite attractive despite his goofy nonchalance and incorrect taste in tossball legends. 

Alex had the grace to look taken aback, even attempting a: “Whaaaat?” before a long, hard swig. 

“‘Lix?’” he chided.

“Ha. Well, certainly haven’t noticed you making a point of not engaging him,” she countered. Every third time she’d get home, bushed and covered in Manti-gore, ADA would chime: “Guess who’s at it again, Captain?” 

“Fine, fine,” the once-Vicar threw up his hands. 

“So is penitence the carnal clause for a vicar? Is it next to the one emphasizing the joy of a good shotgun?” Alex was short and blunt as ever. 

“The, uh, well in the actual literature there’s technically only one passage that really permits it by exclusion…”

“Which you took to its logical extremity because you’re you?” Alex finished.

The Vicar’s mouth moved in all sorts of directions, and he finally set his jaw. “Alex—“

“Is it terribly wrong in whatever power dynamic is happening, here, that. Well. I’m very attracted to you?” she almost spits it, and it certainly feels like rapt venom on the way out. 

Max laughs, his eyes ever so slightly red. 

“You’re really going to prey on a member of your crew?” 

Alex, too high, takes it seriously. 

“I—no, fuck, I don’t,” and makes to stand when a warm hand closes around her wrist.

“Tell me,” he says, forceful, annoying as fuck, and completely clamped on her wrist.

Alex looks down at him, slowly dropping back to her spot. 

“Did you come in here for a reason?” he asks, facing her. 

Alex surges forward on her knees and grabs his jaw demandingly. It’s not rough, but it isn’t gentle, either, and she takes in his blown pupils before biting his lower lip. 

Whatever tepid curiosity was there blossoms into comprehension and alignment as she sucks his full lower lip. _She knows what she’s looking for._

Max smoothly reaches up to haul her into his lap, kissing her firmly with his hand at the nape of her neck. It’s intense and borderline ferocious, and when Alex breaks for air she immediately moves to his jaw, tracing it with her tongue and finding a sensitive spot just below his ear. When she drags her teeth across it, he digs his fingers into her flesh and can’t stifle a small moan. She’s on her back under him before she realizes it, and he’s snarling into her ear.

“I asked if you came in _here_ for a reason,” Max bites her earlobe, hard. 

Alex slaps him, hard. 

She stares at his stunned expression, which dissolves as he realizes she hadn’t meant it, but was perfectly game. 

He grabs her by the jaw, hauling her up against the wall and crashing their mouths together again. Alex gives a sigh of something like relief, wriggling in his grasp with a slight smirk. She digs her fingernails into his biceps and battles through another rough kiss, sucking his tongue and moving her hands up into his hair. She tugs at his shirt and is grateful that he sheds it quickly. 

“You still haven’t answered me,” Max pants, and the returning press of his body against hers demonstrates how far behind they've already left dialogue.

“So,” she smiles, panting as his hand works into her waistband, “You _do_ like to receive confession.” 

“Begging, confessing, whatever, I could do with you on your knees,” he urges. He doesn't know what compels him to say it; he's never blended his interests like this, not once. The Captain's reaction emboldens him enough to keep it up and he thinks his demeanor must have a tinge of conviction to it, completely unlike himself with Felix's mouth gentling at his. 

Alex is outright grinning, fully delighted at what she’s stumbled upon, not doubting his control for a moment. _Finally. Let's spar, preacher._

“Captain, we’re being hailed,” ADA’s voice booms.

Alex smacks her head back against the wall, a hand sprawled across Max’s bare chest. 

It seems to have jarred him, and he extricates himself from her, tugging his shirt back on and standing, offering her a hand, looking effortlessly composed with next to no effort. 

She rises with him, facing him as she retreats quickly to his doorway, dumbly watching his mouth and slipping out. 

Max stands in the center of his room, glancing around like it’s unfamiliar, reeling from what was maybe five minutes of interaction he couldn’t process. He’d honestly expected to get philosophically inebriated and fuck his fist until he passed out, which remained an option now, if less enticing than before.


End file.
